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• photos •
• little loves • Eddie Cibrian's Dimples
Because c'mon! Shame on Invasion's slowburn peril for not providing them a more frequent showcase. Wentworth Miller
He's my boyfriend. He is. No, he just is. He's all green-eyed, widow's-peaked, melting-pot hotness and oiled-massage voice. He's it. • past loves • |
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When I left work last night, I had a big goldfish-buying plan. I was going to get a bowl, some gravel, a couple fake plants and two fish. I even had names picked out: Gilgamesh and Enkidu (because when you're trapped in a 2-gallon glass bowl together you'd better be the best of friends!). Alas, I am still fishless. Here is my story. I reach the train platform just as the doors are about to close, so I hustle a little bit -- and almost get half of some guy's lung on my space boots, as he's picked that particular second to lean out and spit a mucosal mass onto the platform. On the train, a woman sits with a stroller. The non-verbal child strapped within is being fed Purple Reign™ Mistic and Chinese takeaway by his mother. And people wonder why kids are so fat these days. I contemplate buying an almanac and carrying it everywhere I go while looking shifty. I get off the Red Line at Belmont and round the corner onto Clark Street. Just then, a guy holds something out towards me and I reach for it, assuming it's the normal concert flyer or local business coupon. What I find in my hand instead is a thick paperback copy of the Bhagavad-gita written (or edited? or told? or analyzed?) by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Too cool. Free spiritual guidance! Then I get to Petco. Things seem normal except for the strangely omnipresent chirping of crickets. I assume it's feeding time for the iguanas or something and head for the fish section. I look at lots of fish. They even have these tiny silver sharks you can keep as pets! Sweet. However, a complicated saltwater aquarium is not part of my plan. I find the goldfish. There are about 42,318 more kinds of goldfish than you ever knew existed. And they all can apparently grow to 12 inches in length as adults! Who knew? I admire all the fat-bodied, fan-tailed, bug-eyed, fancy-colored varieties, but ultimately gravitate toward the giant tank of commonplace feeder goldfish. At 12 cents a pop, they're my kind of fish! Next, a goldfish bowl. Did you know there are about 42,318 different kinds of bowls and "starter" aquariums? Neither did I, but I could have spent an hour perusing that wall and still not have known what to pick. Don't get me started on the array of fish foods and fake plants. Anyway, I request a Petco fish-centric employee be sent over and, while I'm waiting, I make my big mistake. I idly flip through a few books on proper fishkeeping. Sigh. Overwhelmingly, the books admonish me for ever even thinking for a second about keeping Gilgamesh and Enkidu in an awful, suffocating, poop-filled bowl -- no matter how often or how rigorously I plan to clean it! So I start to feel bad for little Gil and Enk, and get intimidated by the better life in a hulking, super-aerated aquarium I guess I'm supposed to want for them, and finally slink away from the fish department. In the cat food aisles, the cricket noises increase in volume and I suddenly realize -- with true horror, mind you -- that those chirps are not coming from within the iguana enclosure. Oh no, friends, the crickets run amok in Petco! I was starting to wonder about the furtive movement I kept seeing out of the corner of my eye, but never in a million years did I suspect an army of arthropods (Girl-Bart, did I get that right?) had infested the store. Ew! They were everywhere! Once I get a bead on one, I can see dozens. Ew! I grab some cat food and run away to briefly greet the rodents and birds. Three napping hamsters have wedged themselves so tightly and intricately into the same toilet paper roll that I'm not sure how they'll ever escape, nor how they manage to draw breath. One rat is sleeping and drinking water simultaneously. The cockatiels are aggressive as usual, the finches are all hoppy, the canaries look a little worse for wear, and there are two new parrots of some rather large type. I strike up a conversation with one of them who is eventually spooked by a few beeps from my mobile and commences to squawk rather hysterically. I turn to run away before an employee can come over and yell at me for tapping on the glass or some shit, when my eyes are drawn up to the top of a nearby shelf. Sitting there, all cute and innocent, are two zebra finches. Loose. In the store. What kind of carnival is this, Cooper? I decide to hightail it out of there before the African scorpions find a way out of their plastic salad containers to sweet, sweet freedom. I grab some brightly colored toy mice that squeak when squeezed on my way to the register. I make friends with a bulldog while waiting in line. On the bus ride home, I contemplate the Windy City Video/Tan. I understand hybrid businesses like laundromat-cafés, because who doesn't need to eat a BLT and play some Tekken during the spin cycle? But Video/Tan? One can't really accomplish both tasks simultaneously, right? I buy Twinkies and V8 for dinner and half-triumphantly -- I'm sadly fishless, after all -- return home bearing toy mice. This is the hilarious part of the evening, because the minute I demonstrate the squeaking abilities of a certain bright red, catnip-scented mouse, both cats scatter with big puffy tails. Hee! Scooter eventually recovers and has his way with Squeaky Mouse, but Larabee is so freaked she won't come out from under the bed for fifteen minutes. And then, if I even walk in her general direction -- no mouse in hand! -- she dives under the bed and cowers. Too funny. Speaking of funny, Sars is out of sweet rolls. "I am not so much disappointed as I am blinded with rage." jlb | 14:23 I've discovered that a surprise ingredient in the Spiral Descent into Hell is a warm, soft bathrobe. Marge gave me one for Christmas and I've barely left the apartment since because I don't really want to take it off. Warm, soft bathrobes go very well with too much idle cable television watching. "It's 2003! Why can't I teleport?!" jlb | 12:31 In an apparent attempt to become even less efficient, my local post office is now hiring employees who don't seem to understand English. There is this sweet, smiling lady new to my post office. She is always pleasant and I don't dislike her. But, man, does she do...things...deliber...ate...ly. As in, slowly. Plus, I'm convinced she has the most tenuous of grasps on the English language. Observe: Me: Good morning. Lady: Good morning. How can I help you today? Me: I'd like to send these both Airmail please. Lady: You want to mail these? Me: Um, yes. Lady: Is there anything liquid, fragile, perishable or potentially hazardous? Me: No. Lady: Thank you. [Lava flows cool while she touches 1000 on-screen buttons and weighs the first package.] Lady: Okay, how do you want to send this? Me: Airmail. Lady: You see your options there on the screen? Me: Airmail. Lady: The Airmail option? For $7.65? Me: Yes. Lady: It arrives in 4-7 days. Me: Sounds good. Lady: Airmail, 4-7 days? Me: Yes, please. Lady: Thank you. [25,000 senior citizens cross the Canadian border for cheap drugs while she applies endless stickers to the package, then holds it up and Vanna-Whites the sticker placement for my approval.] Me: Looks...good? [While she weighs the second package, I do a cost-benefit analysis of 30-day transit cards versus traditional "pay-as-you-go" transit cards once the CTA prices go up on January 1. I include several scenarios based on the history of my CTA ridership to date. I do all my math longhand and show my work.] Lady: Okay. This weighs 20.8 ounces. How do you want to send this? Me: Airmail. Lady: You see your options on the screen there? You can choose 5-10 day delivery for $26.00 or 4-7 day delivery-- Me: Airmail. 4-7 day. $9.25. Lady: Airmail? Me: Yes, the $9.25 option. Lady: 4-7 days? At which point I just smiled and nodded really big, hoping body language would communicate my desires where actual words had apparently failed. Then she Vanna-ed the sticker placement again. Like, lady, you work here! I imagine you know where the stickers are supposed to go. Why are you looking to me for approval? What if I want my Customs sticker on the right side instead of the left? Or just one air mail sticker instead of three? Do I have these options? Because I'd really like to stand at this window for ten more minutes while I try to communicate my preferences. Anyway. My holiday wish is that the combined awesomeness of Jude Law, Donald Sutherland, Ray Winstone, Brendan Gleeson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kathy Baker, Giovanni Ribisi, Charlie Hunnam, Jena Malone, Ethan Suplee, Lucas Black, Taryn Manning, Jack White, and Cillian Murphy will cancel out the double-fisted wretchedness of seeing Nicole Kidman and Renée Zellweger together in Cold Mountain. Because barf. Nourish yourself today with Sars' holiday essay. "Wow, that's…a really big jar of…mayonnaise." And thanks to KQ for always knowing on which mornings I'll most desperately need a sugar fix. "Those acts of God really stick it in and break it off, don't they?" jlb | 10:49
On In America: Djimon Hounsou is as hot as ever. If all kids were as awesome as the Bolger sisters, I might consider having some. Bring tissues. "I meant to ask you -- I need a cool way to kill people." jlb | 23:59 All my news today is old news because I've been too lazy (read: busy watching my gorram shiny Firefly DVDs) to write, but it's also all unimportant news, so, ya know, whatever. First. Monday night. Train home. This woman's mobile rings and she proceeds to have a lengthy conversation -- die, bitch, die! -- and I swear to god that her voice was like Itchy & Scratchy meet Laverne DeFazio. My ears were bleeding. Never heard anything like it! Second. Tuesday morning. Bus to work. First, not a single morning goes by without a pack of teenagers getting on my bus long after school has started. WTF? The mayor makes a big deal every year about the number of children who are truant from the first day of the schoolyear, but the same children are apparently allowed to run wild the rest of the year. Anyway, Tuesday. A pack of teens in enormous puffy coats get on my bus well after the school day has begun. Yes, I was late for work. Shut up, this isn't about me. Two stops later, a man gets on the bus who obviously knows at least one of the boys in the pack. He hails the kid and immediately says: "Why aren't you in school right now?" Thank you, sir. My question exactly. Without hesitation and in the most sincere way possible, the boy simply replies, "Rats." It was the most brilliant lie ever. I actually laughed out loud. My one-word excuse for anything that I do wrong from now on? "Rats." I'm blaming everything on vermin. Third. On Wednesday morning, one of the cutest real-live boys I've ever seen got on my bus. I couldn't stop peeking at him. So pretty! The bus driver was flirting with him even. Finally, remember the psychotic snowmen stamps from last year? The USPS must be on drugs during the holidays because the stamps I got on Wednesday morning are just as crazy. They depict two different deer and two different Santas in acid-trip colors. Both Santas are on rollerskates. All four are playing musical instruments and their bodies are contorted Kokopelli-style. Way disturbing. "They're coming to get you, Barbara." jlb | 13:11
"There was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus?" jlb | 00:26 An utterly random entry today. I'm so glad someone -- namely, fellow Chicagoan, Regina -- agrees with me on the following: "X-Men 2 is complete and utter ASS. And I consider the first one a first-rate guilty pleasure, my friends. Good lord, the sequel gives new meaning to the word 'assy.' It's the assiest asstastic piece of filmmaking I've seen in ages. But holy moly is Hugh Jackman one hot piece o' tuna. In fact, he's so hot, that I almost don't remember the gargantuan turd of a movie surrounding him. Sigh. Talk more, Hugh. Shut up, Halle."I was beginning to think I was the only one. Then, I've been thinking about this since the walk home from the el tonight. There are only two groups of people who wear earmuffs:
"Buenos días, shitheads!" jlb | 23:44 |
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• the glow •
What stars? That's the glow, baby. • distractions •
Pale & Hairy in CA
Tomato Nation
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